Just curious about how experienced developers here were able to use/experience UE and not land in “tutorial hell”. I don’t know a lot about UE, but I don’t want to sit around for 50 hours and not have anything useful for making content.
Do you:
find just the topic you need and work with that?
take a small course about a specific thing and work on that constantly until you master it and then move on?
watch videos and emulate the actions there?
read books like cookbooks and just use that as reference?
How do you try to avoid mistakes in learning and can actually make something that’s effective and works, without wasting time and actually learn something that sticks?
The knowledge in UE Youtube channel is priceless. My first source if I want something specific.
After all this IMO the best way to learn UE is with specific projects. Search the topic needed to solve towards a goal. Share your solutions with others to try and find better more efficient ways.
Hi @tahdhaze, one way I learned and actually started to excel in UE was by following some good quality youtubers. One mainly was Ryan Laley Channel Trailer (youtube.com). From watching his stuff I was able to watch, emulate and then expand. Sometimes you can get lucky on Udemy and other places and get super cheap courses on sale that can help with other aspects. And also here in the Epic Dev Community there are some really good Epic Staff tutorials, talks, demos, and courses that are pretty decent too.
With what @pezzott1 said, 100% agree on that as it will help with a lot of things in UE and beyond.
in unreal development 50 hours is nothing compared to time it takes to figure everything out Tutorials or not you’ll be spending a lot of time figuring out unreal specific things or general information when you need to make things. Best thing is to get started on something small you enjoy making and throw away later to make something better. When you run into a problem google the stuff and if you really can’t figure it out post a question on the forums. Many tutorials go through X minutes of non specific “how to do this and that” which you don’t need if you are not actually working on something specific. The engine is so big that a beginner tutorial to see basic functionality of it all would easily take 50 hours. 1. start doing something. 2. run into a problem. 3. search how to fix it.
There are some useful resources though. I posted some links in these posts:
Much Appreciated, @Roy_Wierer.Seda145! I think based on your advice, just looking for things in particular and “doing the thing” by actually making it and making it work with other things is the way to go. Then, having that code base of working examples will be the basis for “bigger projects”.
Yes, that’s how I do things too. At times there will be parts of the engine which you use only once in a very long time, which you would forget about if you do a tutorial on them now when you only need it in a year or two. These features also change a lot because this engine is not exactly built to be modular. Instead (I suppose for marketing reasons) they come up with experimental things that replace the original base while still barely in alpha state.
As a programmer I like to start with sketches (placeholders) of anything that is not code such as models and textures and further work on them when I have a working demo. I don’t start with the details (you risk losing them or your time when things change), so there are many panels on the engine that I simply don’t look at for a long time.
Unless it’s what you want to do, I’d also recommend not building heavily upon experimental / new features and entire tutorial projects. new / experimental (and often even existing) features in UE can be very complicated and buggy, forgotten about or broken on subversions. If you decide to build on top of entire projects you’ll spend more time removing things you don’t need than adding things you do need, so just start from scratch and be smart about what you want to depend on. Sketch it then build it. See what plugs in nicely or make your own things.
Tutorials or not you’ll be spending a lot of time figuring out unreal specific things or general information when you need to make things. Best thing is to get started on something small you enjoy making and throw away later to make something better. When you run into a problem google the stuff and if you really can’t figure it out post a question on the forums. Many tutorials go through X minutes of non specific “how to do this and that” which you don’t need if you are not actually working on something specific. The engine is so big that a beginner tutorial to see basic functionality of it all would easily take 50 hours. 1. start doing something. 2. run into a problem. 3. search how to fix it.